Idiotic proposal stopped
December 10th, 2003 at 7:11 am by David FarrarThe idiotic proposal to lower the legal blood alcohol limit for driving from 80 to 50 mg/100 ml has been stopped it seems.
Considering that only one fatal accident in the last year involved a driver with a blood alcohol between 50 and 100 shows that this move would have done almost nothing at all for road safety, but would have turned tens of thousands of NZers into criminals for sharing a bottle of wine over dinner.
It seemed to be all about telling NZers how they should live their lives, rather than improving road safety (hint – better roads) which no doubt is why even the Automobile Association opposed the move.
No tag for this post.
December 10th, 2003 at 3:55 pm
I utterly disagree. It is a tragedy that this piece of legislation has been divebombed out on the basis of the 50mg limit.
For a start, the policy contains a vast array of mechanisms for combatting the road toll. I almost fell over when I saw people bitching about how it fails to deal with the “hard core” of the problem and instead “hurts the common man”. The policy strengthens the current road safety mechanisms on all fronts, including boosting provisions for removing vehicles from repeat offenders, laying the ground-work for proper use of speed cameras and demerit points, and all the rest of the stuff the police and the ltsa are doing. If you doubt the seriousness with which they take this stuff, you haven’t even read their website project update.
I’ll be the first person to jump up and protect your personal liberty. And I will also be the first at the head of the queue to point out that driving on the road is a privilege, not a right. Furthermore, the government restricts that privilege for the sole purpose, of ensuring that other people on the road are not placed in danger by drivers actions.
There are limits to what can be done. Everyone acknowledges this, the 2010 project does not ask for no fatalities. Humans were not designed to handle high-speed collisions.
But the simple fact of the matter is that we can, and have, identified things that can be done to reduce the road toll. As you mentioned, road engineering is one of them, and if you talk to the LTSA you will realise that they are very very serious about building safer roads. But road engineering is the most expensive by far of the methods for reducing the road toll, and in many cases you get a better bang per buck by utilising other methods.
For example, for the same amount that was spent on “forcing” New Zealanders to wear seat belts, only a vastly less effective engineering solution could have been implemented, despite its local effect.
The MOT, LTSA and the Police have been focusing more and more on making use of a wide variety of strategies to improve road safety. After road safety tv advertisements reached their saturation point, the LTSA moved on to building community systems to support attempts to get to communities that did not respond well to the mass media effect (The far north is a good example, not wearing a seat belt is shockingly common).
They have made use of speed cameras and more traditional traffic options, they have done road engineering, they have worked on improving driver education and relicensing to remove dangerous drivers from the road. They have pushed for policy that boosts their ability to get bad drivers off the road.
And it has worked. All the statistics are in the 2010 PDF, but as an example, since 1990 we’re looking at a 50% reduction in road fatalities and a drop of over 200 (2/3rds!) in alcohol related road fatalities.
As a result I stand in awe of people who can sit around bitching about one more glass of wine, in the face of the performance of these people. God knows its hard enough to find government departments with good performance records, and when we finally find one, people are ignoring its recommendations, based not only on their own analysis but other countries as well (Australia, who have a better death ratio than us, have a 50mg limit, and they’re widely considered a nation of drinkers!).
Do you realise that the 2010 program calls for a reduction of 100 fatalities by 2010? your “one fatal accident” was how many deaths? and even if it was only one person, thats 1% of the total right there, without considering the indirect effects of a lower limit.
Indirect effects which include preventing people from reaching the point where they are unable to effectively judge how intoxicated they are when they plan to drive, preventing any number of crashes that do not result in fatalities (There will be 2,750 hospitalisations for a period over a day in 2004 est), and a better example for younger drivers (I believe teenagers are likely to recieve a 100% alcohol ban).
Look, just what are you trying to defend anyway? the right to impair your judgement before placing yourself in control of a large mass of metal capable of hurtling itself at speeds in excess of 120km/h near other large masses of metal, some moving in the other direction?
I really don’t see any good excuse for that. Public transport in New Zealand is not great, but its usable, taxis and dial-a-driver are available, arranging for one person to avoid drinking doesn’t exactly strike me as a huge sacrifice to be honest, or at least delaying getting on the road for a bit after drinking.
I’m no fan of the nanny state, but this isn’t telling you how you should live your life, this is telling you what you have to do to deserve the privilege of driving on the road with the rest of the tax payers, most of whom would prefer not to be killed for no better reason than the other driver thought it impinged on some basic human right to demand that they be sober in command of a vehicle.
Vote:December 11th, 2003 at 9:39 am
Hi Phi,
I agree with you that something must be done to lower the death toll. But the issue is if lowering the alcohol tolerance level is going to help. I’ve seen two statistics: one is the only 1 fatal crash for a person having a level between 50-100 and I’ve also seen statistics citing 35 crashes.
If this measure is really going to help, I’m all for it, for all the reasons you cite. But does it? I’m afraid it’s just a feel good measure.
Real measures cost real money, i.e. road improvements. That really helps. But this government doesn’t seem to wish to invest in roads.
Another thing is having people drive new cars. New cars are much safer (for example have ABS). But that means improving the average standard of living, i.e. raising our OECD ranking (else people are not able to afford it). Also something the government doesn’t want to do.
Vote:December 11th, 2003 at 10:12 am
The police would be better off using their resources to catch the seriously pissed drivers than making criminals out of people who had a couple of glasses at work drinks.
Public transport is limited for a number of New Zealanders and non-existent in rural areas.
The Australian stats show no improvement from the introduction of demerit points on speed cameras and the lowering of the blood/alcohol limit.
These measures are simply an effort to make it look like the govt is doing something, particularly as they keep taxing petrol but our roads aren’t improving.
Vote:December 11th, 2003 at 12:46 pm
Berend:
1. I’d like to see sources for those stats. Not that I particularly disagree with them but I haven’t seen those numbers and I’d like to know whether they’re for a particular time or whether they’re a generalisation with an error margin.
2. The question is not “is it really going to help”, it is, at the very least to 1 death and 35 crashes. The question that appears to be the issue is “is it going to help enough to justify the irritation of the New Zealanders who like the drive while in the 50mg-80mg range”.
3. These are real measures, there is no difference between these measures, between those of tougher licensing, better roads, seat belt campaigns etc. This “real” thing is irritating, its just one more thing in a huge mesh of strategies designed to reduce the road toll.
4. The problem appears to be that nobody gets irritated about better roading. Except, wait, taniwhas occasionally get irritated about better roading but they’re not the average New Zealander. THis appears to be the big point, people want better roads so they don’t have to drive better. Well, sorry, unless you all wanna pay more money, we should be going for the biggest bang for the buck.
5. Your last point is just strange, not that newer cars aren’t a bad move but I find your assertion that the government doesn’t want to improve our OECD ranking rather..odd. I’m certain they would love to, clearly they’re just not taking your preferred route to that goal
GPT:
1. The mg limit is not a resource hog. In fact part of the focus of the policy that was being looked at was to reduce the load on the courts.
2. They have to breath test everyone anyway looking for the seriously drunk ones, so, no dice there anyway.
3. Agreed regarding the public transport point for rural users. This is a valid point but not one I feel outweights the points in favor of drink-driving limitations. I am confident that other mechanisms for rural users can be evolved given the need.
4. Regarding australian stats, I most certainly did not recieve this impression. From the Herald:
New South Wales’ acting commander of traffic services, Inspector Kerry Grainger, told National Radio that a similar move across the Tasman had drastically reduced the road toll there.
The reduction, with other initiatives, had halved the road toll in New South Wales, Inspector Grainger said.
From Office of Road Safety, WA AU:
Crash risk is associated with Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC). For example, drivers are twice as likely as those with a BAC of 0g/100ml to crash with a BAC of 0.05g/100ml, seven times as likely to crash with a BAC of 0.08g/100ml
Intoxicated drivers involved in fatal crashes are three times more likely to have been speeding than sober drivers
http://www.officeofroadsafety.wa.gov.au/Research/crash_stats_analysis/5-2.html presents enough evidence that I am dubious your claim to statistics is valid at all and request some kind of source. The details specified there indicate that the WA has been very successful in reducing alcohol based crashes, including since 1992 when the 50mg limit was introduced in Australia.
5. At this point you simply appear to be bitter. The roads are improving, perhaps they’re not improving as quickly as you might wish but then, road engineering is expensive and difficult to do well. It is quite clear that safety is not the only focus of the petrol tax, indeed urban congestion and road burn appear to be major factors, if not significantly larger, expecially for Auckland.
Other notes:
findlaw.com.au states that:
Specialists and pathologists make their recommendations based upon a person of medium build weighing 70 kilograms.
Example one. A person drinking two middies of beer (2 x 285 ml) will have a reading of 0.043 grams of alcohol in their blood. It will take two hours and 17 minutes to remove this alcohol from the body.
Example two. A person drinking three glasses of wine (3 x 170 ml) will have a reading of 0.045 grams of alcohol in their blood. It will take two hours and 24 minutes to remove this alcohol from the body.
This doesn’t seem unreasonable?
I know for a fact that the policies outlined in the paper being presented are not political fluff. They are mechanisms presented by departments that have a solid track record in producing results in reducing the road toll. I firmly believe they should be given the credit they deserve and not dismissed as feel-good measures.
Vote:December 11th, 2003 at 1:56 pm
Phi:
First of all you are making assumptions that because I think dropping the blood alcohol limit is a stupid idea, that I am against all the road safety mechanisms of the last ten years. I am not. In fact I used to get a lot of heat for supporting the new driver licence regulations (no life-time licence) which I think were important to picking up disqualified drivers.
Yes driving is a privilege, but one has to have balance between road safety measures and the benefits of driving. If one really wanted to eliminate the road toll you would pass a law requiring all cars to be able to drive no faster than 30 km/hr.
I disagree road engineering is the most expensive method. Current policy is to build or fix roads (IIRC) when the benefit to cost ratio is over 5:1. One could argue that when the ratio is over 1:1 then the road should be built or changed.
Generally the LTSA do a very good job IMO. As with all policy advocates they sometimes lose sight of the big picture and that is why you need a Minister with independent thought.
Public transport is not an option for the many people who live outside cities.
As you say the policies of the 90s were very sucessful. I do (and not just because it is Labour) have doubts about some of the current policies. Take speed cameras. They used to be set to target the top 15% of speedsters. this was sensible because on some roads it was very safe to drive at 115 km/hr while others you would be a lunatic to do so. People accepted the targetting of the worst drivers. Now they are set to get anyone faster than the tolerance margin and more and more people see the aim as revenue not safety.
Targetting the problem drivers is far more effective IMO than targeting all drivers.
Vote:December 11th, 2003 at 4:55 pm
1. I wasn’t assuming that
sorry if it looked that way. Obviously this is a blog, not a policy analysis site so you didn’t go into detail on your objections to it but the way you dismissed the proposal suggested that you gave no weight to its backers, and by proxy what they have achieved.
2. The goal is not to eliminate the road toll, the 2010 plan quite clearly states that and I believe that the numbers they have in there are the balance that has been decided regarding safety and benefits..
3. Hrm. You disagree regarding the expense, but you don’t point at any other mechanism we currently utilise which is more expensive. To my knowledge, it is the most expensive. The LTSA certainly seem to think so. The cost benefit ratio is correct, but bear in mind that many of the calculated costs of a crash are not borne by the government directly, the cost is “social cost” which includes things like hospital time (government) and community effect (not government). Unless the government is recieving 1:1 revenue, it cannot spend 1:1 unless it takes money from elsewhere which is clearly not available.
Quite apart from that however, if there are other tactics aside form road engineering that provide better results for less cost, why wouldn’t we use them?
4. Not quite sure what you’re trying to say there. The purpose of a Minister seems to be an ideological stance, not a fact. Its questionable whether the independant thought should be displayed by the minister, or the cabinet, or the government as a whole. Personally, I’m more inclined to lay the requirements at the government end of the scale, I think it is more than appropriate for a Minister to have limited tunnel vision regarding their policy in order to ensure that the recommendations from the experts (which no minister is) reach the ears of the general assembly.
5. Agreed, alternatives including non-drinking drivers etc are available, and as stated you can go 3 glasses of wine within 50mg, this hardly seems excessive.
6. Since when was it safe to drive at 115km/h? I know that some drivers believe its safe to do so, but even if you’re on a nice straight flat bit of road on a dry day, you have done serious harm to your time to react to the unexpected, your stopping time, and severely increased the damage you will do in a collision. YOU may be driving a flash new jag with all the mod con safety features but that isn’t going to help the people in the old bomb you crash into as you swerve to avoid (insert any potential random event including children, animals, other cars etc).
There is no excuse for breaking the 100k limit with the sole exception of reducing the danger of an overtaking maneouver. In every other circumstance you are seriously boosting the chances of fatalities in the event of a crash. We know mistakes happen on the roads, part of the policy must be to make those mistakes survivable, and it has been. That is why we have a 100k limit, its not some recommended average speed people should feel like they can overrun at a whim.
The problem of the “Revenue gathering” meme is a serious one, and is why I approve of the move towards demerit points instead. This would reduce the feeling that police are just doing it for the money and reinforce the fact that they are seriously trying to reduce the road toll. At the moment our speed camera system has too many delays to operate with demerit points, but the introduction of an electronic system should resolve this and I look forward to it.
They’re not targetting all drivers. You’re assuming that all drivers speed. Perhaps they do in your social circle, but they certainly don’t overall. The speeding message is getting through, although its taking its time to get through to the white collar male who can afford a vehicle that can exceed the speed limit easily and contains the safety features necessary to justify it to themselves.
Vote:December 12th, 2003 at 7:35 am
Phi, can’t find the numbers, even after looking for them for a while. Just things that stuck in my memory.
Did the government announce an intention to move to the OECD top 15? Must have missed that…
And the economic indicators are moving in the wrong direction for that. They took the wrong road I assume.
I always disregard studies that point to some government measure and do before/after comparisons with total disregard for any other factor that could have lowered the death toll. Did people drive more safely? Were cars better? Was the road improvement? These studies are usually statistically flawed. And a correlation is not a cause.
But I agree that this study supports your view. And if it would work, I wouldn’t be against it as I said.
Vote: